


A Tale of Midnight City

by Anonblunder



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Midnight Crew - Freeform, My First Fanfic, POV Second Person, The Felt - Freeform, Time Shenanigans, elaborate metaphors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2019-08-08 04:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16422410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonblunder/pseuds/Anonblunder
Summary: In an alternate universe where the intermission ended a little differently, Spades Slick and the gang are up to their knees in shenanigans and weird plot shit. Upon defeating The Felt, the Crew finds themselves pitted against a new and original rival gang, but not before Slick can get some preliminary errands done first.





	1. Upon Reflection

Your name is SPADES SLICK, now who the hell are you? You interrogate your reflection through a piece of broken glass on the sidewalk. Ain’t nothing you love more than asserting dominance over your mirrorself. You answer your own question by reminding yourself that you are also Spades Slick. This is hopeless. Getting into squabbles with your reflection is tough considering you both share an identity, along with an entire timeline of identical events. Not for long, though.

The formidable quadriad of Machiavellian mobsters, known as The Midnight Crew, had been disbanded two weeks ago. The Crew consisted of a numbskull with his head in the clouds, another with a head up his ass, and the third with his head a few screws loose. And you were head of it all. Reasons for the break-up are a little hazy, you think, but you suppose it might have had something to do with the gruesome deaths of the entire crew, sans yourself. Actually, it undoubtedly had to do with that.

Without a crew to head, you can bet your headless cast iron horseman ass that the amount of shit getting fucked has decreased tenfold. And when the fucking stops, the shitpile doesn’t stop from getting taller. You need to assemble a new crew, and a couple of ordinary lackeys ain’t gonna cut it. What you’re going to need is a crew identical to your last one. A crew with shared identities and an entire timeline of identical events. And you think you know just where to find one.

Your Crew gave up their life of crime to none other than The Felt. Which is to say they had it taken away from them. Eye for an eye, you mutter. You slaughtered every last one of those slimeballs with nothing more than the knives on your back and their own tools used against them. Nobody hurts your crew and gets away with it alive.

You make your way to the remains of The Felt mansion. Its viridescent glow reeks with self-importance and otherworldly presence. Those smug, green idiots had it coming with a paint job like that. An utter disgrace to Midnight City and its signature noir landscape. The casino fiasco was just the last straw; their worst atrocity was this piece of real estate.

You find yourself at the entrance of the mansion, its cloth interior soaked with blood. All the green and red form a color scheme that puts you in an unexplainably festive mood. You step over pools of obnoxious amounts of blood. You hate how much these assholes bleed. It's time to round up the crew.

Lounging on one of the numerous staircases in the mansion, you find your first associate: Certainly Dead (CD). A bloodstained lance sits by his feet, which you can only assume is responsible for his chest cavity of similar diameter. You drag his partially eviscerated body to the foyer for later use.

Next you find who else but Definitely Deceased (DD), his slender body hung over a collapsed clock. The numerous bullet holes on his chest seem to suggest he ain’t doing too hot. Transporting his body takes considerably more effort than CD’s.

Moving all these bodies into one spot wasn't a task you were excited to undertake. Undertaking ain't in your job description, and it sure as hell isn't any of the rungs in your corporate ladder. When it comes to mortuary affairs, you're the manufacturer, not the distributor. Today you're making an exception. You've got one last, and certainly not least, amount of body to move before we can get this show on the road.

You finally uncover Haggard Bygone (HB), his hands gripping to the vault door as tightly as it is shut. His battered body would be a pain in your ass to relocate on its own, but you can't seem to get his hands to let go of the vault. This guy isn’t moving anytime soon. You’ll have to revive the rest of the crew before getting to him.

You head back to the vestibule where you had put down the first two corpses. You place a full-body antique mirror in front of the corpse pile, which has appropriately refrained from getting taller. The mirror’s glass is perfectly reflective and, as far as you can tell, entirely smudgeless. Its vibrant green frame tells of its origin in Doc Scratch’s apartment, where you made yourself a comfortable guest several weeks ago. It resembles a FENESTRATED WALL in all ways but the color of its border.

You retrieve your CROWBAR from your inventory and hold it in your fucking-shit-up position. Here goes nothing. You take three swings and, much like a normal mirror, the glass shatters to the ground. Unlike a normal mirror, however, your reflection remains intact, now no longer separated by glass. The mirror functions like a portal into an entirely mirrored universe. You throw the crowbar to the ground, creating a harmonized metal clank.

Finally you can see this bastard face to face. Coward has been hiding behind bodies of water and thick sheets of glass his whole life. They replicate your every move. Not intentionally, of course. After all, you’re both just doing what Spades Slick would do.

You try to reach your hand through the mirror. Instead of cold glass, you collide with the warm touch of your reflection’s palm. You still can’t get through. You’ll just keep bumping into each other like a bunch of bumbling idiots.

You look at your reflection sympathetically. “Slick,” the two of you simultaneously begin to speak. “We both know how this is going to go down. Things would get a little awkward with two Slicks anyway.”

You draw a white magnum and point it at your double, which they do synchronously. You load it with an eccentric, white sphere and place your finger on the trigger. “No hard feelings, yeah?”

…

You let out a reciprocated sigh. You shift the sights of your gun away from the devilish doppelgänger. You can’t murder such a respectable son of a bitch. You insert the barrel through your mouth and point upwards. Your reflection does the same. See you on the other side of the mirror.

You both pull the trigger.


	2. Lucky Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey. its been a while. i don't feel like this chapter lived up to the first but i still want to continue this. also, the misspelling of Texas Hold 'Em was deliberate.

Your name is CLOVER. The soundwaves of a solitary gunshot faintly stimulate your rotting, almost-bloodless corpse. You do nothing important, on account of the fact that you are dead.

⇒ Go to a time when you were not dead.

Your name is CLOVER, and your health has improved considerably. You’re alive, for starters, and your blood levels are back to the standard amount an alive leprechaun should have flowing through their capillaries. You’re as youthful as can be; you don’t look a day over dead.

Dead you may as well be, however, as your entire gang of misfits has been brutally disposed of by Spades Slick and his fatally infuriating crew. Without The Felt, you don’t have a broken leg to stand on. The mass murder of your associates was what led you to make your lucky escape out of the mansion and into the catacombs of Midnight City.

Hidden within this labyrinth of a sewer system, there’s no doubt that Slick is looking for you. You are certain he’s going to interrogate you for some sort of temporal loophole to bring back his friends. There’s only one way to undo that kind of damage, and it doesn’t come without its repercussions. You get the feeling you won’t be around to see them anyway.

It’s been about a fortnight since the shakedown over at the mansion, and it’s only a matter of time before Slick finds you. All you’ve had to entertain yourself for these past two weeks are a deck of playing cards and your own vibrant imagination. You’ve been secretly hoping that Slick finds you. Solitaire hasn’t been very good at helping you kill time, you think, especially since you’ve totally forgotten how the rules go.

The sound of a knife scraping across a smooth, stone wall puts the brakes on your train of thought. That’s definitely him, you think, and he knows he’s found you. You quickly take cover to the side of a doorway, as a last-ditch effort to evade an encounter with the knife-handler. You suddenly aren’t wishing for him to find you anymore.

The sound of the knife scraping against the wall produces a sharp, violent sound. They’ll pierce your ears when they’re not piercing your internal organs with their blade. The recurring noise grows louder as Slick draws nearer.

Slick says they know you’re in there. They tell you to get out and make it easier for the both of you.

You gradually reveal your head and later the rest of your body in front of the doorway.

Oh, h-hey Slick, you can’t help but stammer. You tell him you’d offer him a cup of tea but the stench of Carapacian fecal matter has likely overshadowed any desire for consumption. You also do not have any tea.

Slick glares at you apathetically.

Why don’t we cut to the chase, they tell you, gently gesturing their head towards their blade.

Now, now, Slick! No need to resort to any drastic measures, you reply. How about we settle this over a game of blackjack? Or some Tecks’s hold ‘em?

You nervously reveal a deck of playing cards in the palm of your hand. Slick slaps it out from our grip, sending the cards fluttering across the corridor.

Ah, 52-pickup is fine, too, you suppose, trying not to sound too sheepish.

Slick pins you against the wall and puts their knife to your throat. They ask you how to bring their friends back. By the tone of their voice and the position of that knife, you get the feeling that this is their ultimatum.

You tell Slick there’s one way. A way to bring back all of the Midnight Crew without a scratch on them. A way to bring things back to the way they were.

You tell Slick what must be done. You prepare a grocery list of all the equipment they will need and where to find it. You can’t believe you’re doing this.

“But I must warn you, Slick. This procedure will bring about a cascade of eternal misfortune that I’m afraid you aren’t able to completely comprehend! Breaking a mirror like this one will--”

“Hush.” Slick cuts you off. “So by doing this I would be able to resurrect anyone?”

“Theoretically, yes! But only once,” you reply.

“Good.” Slick takes out a white magnum and points it towards you. “If this whole revival thing doesn’t work, don’t wonder why you’re still dead.”


End file.
